


Little Beast

by CloudAtlas



Category: Marvel
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Dead Character, Gen, Gods and Monsters, Magical Realism, Other: See Story Notes, Physical Abuse, Supernatural Elements, Violence, i have no fucking idea guys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-23
Updated: 2017-08-23
Packaged: 2018-12-14 13:01:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11783703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CloudAtlas/pseuds/CloudAtlas
Summary: that’s a nice touch, stains in the night, whiskey and kisses for everyone





	Little Beast

**Author's Note:**

> I have absolutely no idea where this came from. Not a clue. 
> 
> See end of story notes for spoilery content warnings.
> 
> Title and summary from Little Beast by Richard Siken. Thanks to **geckoholic** for encouragement, **inkvoices** for beta and probably some mild fever dream I didn't notice I was having for everything else.

 

Clint’s best friend is dead.

She’s called Kate and she sits behind him in biology. No one else can see her, but he can.

 

It’s hot; the wind dry as bone, scouring away all moisture. Clint doesn’t want to cry but his body won’t listen. Thankfully the wind hides all evidence, sucking at the water like it needs it to live.

If Clint could live on tears he reckons he’d be in a better place than the one he’s in now.

His father hits him again and the taste of copper blooms on his tongue.

Kate can’t touch his father, but it doesn’t stop her hurling abuse at him from the side-lines. Not that his father can hear her.

No one can hear Kate.

“You should leave,” she says once his father has left him gulping dry air in ragged breaths. It hurts his throat but, well, he needs to keep going somehow, doesn’t he?

Or does he? He’s not sure right now. Sometimes he thinks Kate has got it better than him. Silly, being jealous of a dead girl.

“And go where?” Clint asks, but Kate doesn’t have an answer for that.

 

Clint’s best friend was killed in a car crash. Given where he grew up, it would be less surprising if her uncle had beaten her to death or something, but no, it was just a car crash; too fast on the corner of Highway 37, the smell of rubber and motor oil, red and chrome, all the broken glass sparkling in the full moon. Her sister survived and her family moved away, but Kate stayed.

Sometimes he thinks it was to keep him company, but he’s not so stupid as to actually believe that. Ghosts probably just can’t move from where they died or something.

Kate says he’s an idiot, but she said that when she was alive too so he doesn’t listen.

The crumpled steel crash barrier is still there, on Highway 37. It shouldn’t be, it should have been removed, but it is. There used to be flowers there, plastic flowers with faded petals and polythene wrapping that rustled in the breeze, but no one leaves them out anymore.

Clint can’t afford flowers. Not that he cares. He has Kate still, even if no one else can see her.

 

“I’d kill him, if I could.”

“Death has made you very bloodthirsty.”

“I wanted to kill him long before I died, Clint.”

Clint doesn’t want to kill his father, not really. It seems like too much work and he’d only go to jail for it. It’d be much easier to kill himself. Practical. Sensible.

“I’d haunt your ass,” Kate warns.

“You can’t haunt a ghost.”

“Watch me.”

 

After his father’s latest beating, Clint spends about three weeks moving very gingerly. He’s fairly sure he’s cracked some ribs; the bruising is epic and it hurts to breathe.

It always hurts to breathe though, that’s just a fact of Clint’s existence. It hurts to breathe and it hurts to exist and he’s jealous of a dead girl because she doesn’t have to do either.

He finds some whiskey and takes it out into the cornfields behind his house (not home, never home). Stares up at the stars and drinks until there’s double, until the world swims and the ground swoops under his back. It stops his ribs aching, but it doesn’t make breathing easier.

Clint’s crying.

Where’s the wind? It used to be on his side, it used to fix this sort of thing. Suck the water from his eyes; dry him out.

He has a headache now and his ribs hurt from the wracking sobs.

God. Where’s Kate?

“I’m here, Clint.”

“I fucking hate you,” he slurs. “You fucking _left_.”

There’s a long silence.

“I’m right here, Clint.”

 

Because of Kate dying and her family moving away, two places opened up in the school. It’s not like they’re massively oversubscribed though, so there was just this empty chair behind Clint in biology that Kate sat in because no one else would and it was still her seat, dammit.

Clint walks in one day to find a guy sitting there instead and Kate stood behind him looking murderous.

“That seat’s taken,” he says before sitting down and the girl who sits next to him – though ‘next to’ is a loose definition of what she does, practically hanging off the edge of the table like Clint’s bruises might be catching – snorts.

“Dead girls don’t need chairs.”

Clint can hear Kate grinding her teeth. “And pious church girls like you shouldn’t need pregnancy tests either but you don’t see me saying anything.”

Clint rolls his eyes.

The guy doesn’t say anything, but he also doesn’t move.

 

_Who’s your friend?_

Clint spins on his heel, kicking up loose red soil to be blown away in the hot wind.

The fucking wind is back. Now, when he doesn’t need it. He rubs dust from his eyes and squints.

It’s the guy from biology.

“What friend?” Clint asks and then watches in horror-slash-amazement as the guy tips his head towards Kate.

“You – you can see her?”

The guy nods.

Kate is indignant. “You can see me and you still didn’t give me my fucking seat back. Douchebag.”

“I – ”

But Clint doesn’t know how to finish that because – well. Clint had accepted that he was mad. No one else could see Kate, ergo Kate wasn’t there, ergo Clint was hallucinating. Too many blows to the head from his father, too much whiskey much too young, too much hot wind sucking the moisture from Clint’s lungs until he could drink a gallon of water and the desert madness wouldn’t lift.

_How did she die?_

“Car accident.” Clint answers truthfully, because he can’t think of anything else to say.

The guy nods, once. He then turns on his heel and leaves.

 

Clint’s halfway through a fifth of bourbon in the burnt out playground by the river before he realises that the guy never once opened his mouth.

 

The next day and Kate is sat back in her usual chair and the guy has pulled a chair up next to her. The girl who sits next to Clint gives him a deeply suspicious look and moves a couple more inches away from him.

“He’s not there,” Kate says on their way back to his house (house, never home).

“What do you mean?”

“People feel sort of cold to me, like walking under a waterfall.” She kicks at some stones. They don’t move. “He doesn’t feel like anything.”

“Can you hear him?”

Kate gives him a strange look, which morphs into a deeply unimpressed look when he pulls the remaining fifth of bourbon out of a dried out tree by the playground.

“That stuff will kill you, Clint,” she says.

“You’re just worried that you’ll be stuck with me forever.”

“I’m already stuck with you forever.”

Kate’s a joker. And a heinous fucking bitch. She’s _dead_ ; Clint can cope however the fuck he wants.

“He doesn’t talk,” Kate says after a while but by that point Clint doesn’t care anymore, the aching loneliness burned away by five dollar bourbon.

 

 _I’m the vanguard_ , the guys says to him the next day and Clint is looking at him straight in the face so can _see_ that he doesn’t open his mouth.

“And I’m fucking hallucinating,” Clint replies which: dumb, don’t talk to your hallucinations Clint.

Next to the guy, Kate picks her nails.

Too fucking late for that, Clint.

 _No you’re not_ , the guy replies, like him saying it will make it so. _I am the soldier of the vanguard. She is coming for you_.

“Oh, fuck off,” Clint grumbles.

 

Clint’s father finds the bourbon is gone and beats Clint senseless. Clint would care, but he’d have to feel to care.

 

 _You should take better care of yourself_ , the guy says a couple of days later, when Clint manages to drag himself back to school. The girl who sits next to him just ups and leaves, her friends finding her space on a cramped table on the other side of the room. Kate flicks the bird at her back.

_She is coming._

“If you say you’re the vanguard one more time…”

_You should take better care of yourself._

 

Clint doesn’t take better care of himself. This time he’s fairly sure his father has loosened teeth. He spits blood into the red dust and wishes he were dead.

 _C’mon_ , says a voice in his head, and he turns swollen shut eyes to find the guy, the vanguard, the soldier, stood beside him. It’s probably all in his head, but he looks like he’s wearing armour. Or robes. Or battle fatigues. Something. Something teenage boys don’t wear.

A smile. Maybe he’s wearing a smile.

No one smiles here.

_C’mon, she’s coming._

“Who’s coming?”

_Your friend._

He meant Kate, that time. But Clint has a feeling that the next time, it won’t be Kate.

 

“So, he doesn’t talk and he’s not there,” Kate says a couple of nights later. Clint couldn’t find any bourbon this time, which is probably a good thing. Or maybe not. The hangover has finally arrived.

Maybe he’s just been drunk the whole time. Drunk since Frankie fucking Turner gleefully told him they found pieces of Kate all over his pumpkins.

“He’s pretty though, for a guy who’s not there.”

“Shut up, Kate.”

“Not trying to die tonight?”

The sun shines right through Kate. Clint used to think it was creepy, which was dumb. Kate’s a ghost. Of course it’s creepy.

“I think I’m already dead. I think this is hell.”

“Oh, it’s probably hell, but you’re not dead yet.”

Normally Clint would say, ‘how do you know?’ but Kate actually is dead, so. That answers that question.

 

“Do you have a name?”

Clint and the guy are walking back to his house (never home). He’s not sure why the guy is walking with him but he has this strange feeling that this was always the plan; that the guy is here for _him_.

 _Not really_.

“Not really? What kind of dumbass answer is that? Everyone has a name.”

_I don’t._

“Why?”

The guy smiles. Clint’s used to him not opening his mouth to speak now. And Kate is right; he’s pretty for a guy who isn’t there.

 _No one gave me one_.

“Not even the one who’s ‘coming after’ or whateverthefuck?”

_Not one you could say._

Clint squints at the guy, backlit against the afternoon sun. He dresses in black; black jeans and black boots and a black hoodie with cuffs that always cover his hands even though it’s too hot for that shit. His hair is black. Sometimes Clint thinks his eyes are black too.

 

“Why are you here?” Clint asks, much later. Kate is sitting underneath a tree. Not being able to touch things kind of sucks. It limits what you can do other than verbally harass people.

“I’m dead asshole,” she snaps.

“Not you.”

Clint found some alcohol from somewhere; it’s clear, so vodka or gin, but he’s too drunk to be able to tell which.

The guy turns to look at him. _I’ve come to take you home_.

Clint doesn’t remember anything after that, but he wakes up in his bed rather than in a field so – that’s a thing.

The guy really needs a name if he’s going to be carrying dead-drunk Clint around. It seems only fair.

Though, if he means here when he says ‘home’ he’s gonna get a punch in the face.

 

“What if I called you James?”

Clint doesn’t think anyone who’s ever punched him as been called James. James is a good name.

The guy shrugs. _Okay_.

Kate and James. Does this mean Clint has two friends now? Sure, one’s dead and one’s not there, but; _progress_.

 

James doesn’t get drunk. He just watches as Clint does.

It must be boring for him really, seeing as he and Kate can’t talk to each other. But then he sees them huddled under a tree together with a book and… Well. They seem to be getting along just fine.

“Petulant is not a good look on you, Barton.”

Kate’s not under the tree anymore. Fucking ghosts.

“I’m not being petulant,” Clint mutters.

 _Yes you are_.

James isn’t under the tree anymore either. What is – what is going on?

“Yes you are,” Kate echoes.

Clint doesn’t like this. Talking to ghosts he can deal with; that’s a regular sort of desert crazy. James is – James is something else. It makes his skin itch.

“We’re learning sign language. Soon we’ll be able to mock you behind your back.”

“You do that anyway.”

It’s clear James doesn’t know what Kate is saying, but he smiles anyway. It’s disconcerting. No one smiles here.

For a guy who doesn’t ever open his mouth, Clint sure does stare at his lips a lot.

 _Stop staring_.

Clint blushes and looks away.

 

Clint only goes back to the house when he knows his father won’t be there, to pick up food and to change his clothes. He sleeps in the barn on the edge of Old Watkin’s cornfield and washes in the river when he remembers. He probably stinks, but he doesn’t care. He hangs out with a dead girl and a… Whatever James is. They don’t give a shit.

Today, he judged it wrong.

He doesn’t know what set his father off this time, he almost never knows, but he’s left semi-conscious and bleeding on the floor, loose nails digging into his skin and the smell of alcohol and dry wood strong in his nose.

He’s fairly sure his arm is broken. He can’t lift himself up.

 _C’mon_ , says James, and how does he always get into the house? How is he always there? Is he also dead, like Kate? Is Clint just surrounded by dead people?

Is Clint dead now? That would be a relief.

 _C’mon_ , James says again, but Clint can’t move and he sees brief conflict flicker across James’ expression before he pushes his hand out from the edge of his hoodie – and it looks so pale and vulnerable, his fingernails ringed with red like he’s had trouble scrubbing blood from his hands – and places it against Clint’s forehead.

The pain is blinding, so overwhelming that it feels endless; like his bones are on fire, like his skin is being flayed and rubbed in chilli, like his eyeballs are being stabbed with needles. He comes to retching onto the dusty floor, tears leaking from his bloodshot eyes.

If this is dying, maybe he doesn’t actually want to die.

James removes his hand, looking contrite; like he didn’t just force electricity through every nerve ending Clint has and some he didn’t know he possessed.

 _C’mon,_ he says, _she is coming_.

“You’re the vanguard,” Clint gasps out instead of saying ‘what the ever-loving _fuck_?!’ and James smiles.

_I am the vanguard. She’s come to take you home._

Whatever Clint’s father had done to him is gone now; burned away. His arm’s not broken, his skin’s not bruised.

He’s sober.

Kate is still there. So is James.

Okay, so, not desert crazy then.

 

They leave through the front door. They’re not quiet about it. Clint’s father’s in the front room and while he knows his father can’t see Kate, James all in black and Clint’s bruise free face are enough to ensure he doesn’t try make to stop them.

 _You have been marked_ , James says, and Clint thinks he’s talking to him but James’ eyes are locked on his father. _This will not being forgotten._

James’ hand is hot through the back of Clint’s t-shirt and because nothing makes sense now he just leans into it. James might be dead, or – or he’s not even sure. Telepathic? Clint’s has no idea. James is an attractive, maybe-telepathic, maybe-dead _something_ and he’s taking Clint away from his father. Clint and his best friend. Who is a ghost.

Kate lost her ring when she died, Clint thinks inanely, watching her flipping his father off with see through hands. It’s probably now under one of Frankie fucking Turners pumpkins. The thought makes him want to punch his face in.

Clint pushes his tongue against his teeth, worrying one where it’s loose. He can still taste blood and alcohol in the back of his throat. He wonders if it’ll ever go away.

 _It’s okay, she’s coming for you_.

“Can Kate come?” he asks and Kate looks at him gratefully. She’s the only reason he’s survived this long in this godforsaken hellhole of a desert town.

 _This town is not godforsaken,_ James says, but he doesn’t answer Clint’s question.

“Please.”

James is like an inky shadow beside him. Kate is almost invisible.

 _It is not up to me_ , James says. _I am only here for you._

 

The stars have gone when they get outside, the sky obscured by threatening cloud. The air is so close Clint feels like it’s trying to creep down his throat and choke him. Before, he would have welcomed that, but before he didn’t have James’ hot hand on his back. Before he thought he was desert crazy. Now he’s not so sure.

It’s exciting. Or – like car crashes are exciting. Adrenaline and fear waging war in his veins.

There’s a blinding flash of white and a crack so loud Clint jumps and he looks back to find his old house on fire, the dry, brittle wood crackling and popping.

_She doesn’t take lightly to those who harm what she has claimed as her own._

“What – who is she?”

_I am the vanguard. She is the army._

James turns and looks him straight in the eye and Clint was wrong, his eyes are not black. They’re – he’s not even sure. James looks like he’s filled with fire.

_This town is not godforsaken._

Clint turns away from his face, sees Kate outlined against the flames of what was once his house (never home). They dance through her skin, and for a moment he can see her blood, the breaks where bone met blacktop, the torn muscle. And then she’s just Kate again; wonderful, familiar, see-through, dead Kate.

But behind her is another.

She looks like she’s walked out of the burning house. She looks like she’s on fire. Or is fire. Or –

 _You are not godforsaken_.

The woman walks towards them and, as she passes Kate, she reaches out and touches her shoulder. Kate gasps and buckles, her hands scrabbling in the rocks and dirt.

The rocks and dirt move.

“Maybe you should have taken better care of yourself,” the woman says to Clint. She looks the same age as Clint, as James, as Kate. She looks as old as the sea, as the hills, as the fire consuming his house (never home).

She looks at him.

“But you’re here now.”

She leans over to James, her face inches from his and, for the first time, Clint sees James open his mouth. He kisses this woman, and his teeth are too long and too many and there’s blood on her lips when they part.

“What – ?”

“You were never godforsaken, Clint Barton,” the woman says, making no movement to stem the flow of blood from her lips. There’s another flash of lighting and her eyes look like bright white disks. “The wind brought your tears to me and here I am.”

Kate is still gasping into the dirt and her scrabbling fingers bump into Clint’s ratty trainers.

“Clint,” she says, like she’s trying not to choke on her own blood. “Clint, I can – ”

“You and your dead friend.”

 _Not so dead anymore,_ James says, and he sounds _amused_.

“ _What did you do?”_ Kate asks through wet breaths.

“I found your ring,” the woman replies. “Very foolish of you to lose it. Still, it brought you this, and it brought me _him_.”

And she reaches out and places one long finger against his chest, her fingernail ringed with red like she’s had trouble scrubbing blood from her hands.

“You sacrificed with pain,” she says, and digs her nail in. It doesn’t hurt.

“And you sacrificed with your life,” she says to Kate, holding her hand to her and lifting her from the ground.

She looks recently exhumed, covered in red dust like a second skin. There are stiches at her elbow from where they reattached her arm for the funeral. The mortuary scars on her chest are bright and vivid. Clint’s never seen her like this before.

“And what did you sacrifice?” Clint asks James, realisation kicking in because there has to be symmetry here. They – they like that. Gods.

 _My voice_ , he says.

And he smiles and there are too many teeth.

 

The fire burns itself out by morning, the flames curiously contained by the rotting garden fence; a black patch of scarred earth and ash, perfectly square. The fire service turns up but they don’t see Clint and Kate and James, and they definitely don’t see the woman. And when they finally leave, trailing smoke and caution tape like ribbons, she walks among the burnt-out husk of Clint’s house (never home) like a priestess accepting tribute.

Like a god accepting sacrifice.

Her hands are black when she returns and she swipes her thumb across Clint’s forehead.

“This is yours,” she says, but when Clint puts his hand up to feel the grit sticking to his skin there’s nothing there.

“What happens now?” Kate asks, staring out over this place that was kind to neither of them.

 _We leave_ , answers James.

The wind is back, like hot fingers trailing across Clint’s face, pulling at James’ hair, making Kate’s shirt flutter. The staples in her chest gleam in the thin morning light.

“But where do we go?” It’s Clint that asks this time.

And the woman turns and holds out her hands – black with soot, nails ringed in red – and says; “Away from here.”

**Author's Note:**

> cw: Kate is dead, physical child abuse, underage alcohol abuse, vague and undefined horror elements, implied parental death by fire, vague descriptions of corpses and the aftermath of a car crash, child neglect, suicidal ideation, depression and bad coping mechanisms. I think that covers everything?


End file.
